sugar

It’s no secret that I’m not afraid of fat. Actually, I’ll qualify that. Trans-fat, yes, afraid. Fried foods, yes, afraid. Oils (except for non-heated extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil), yes, afraid. Naturally occurring saturated fat? Not afraid of it at all. Although I don’t consume them in enormous quantities, organic eggs, butter, milk, cream, cheese, lard and tallow are staples in my diet, and I make sure that around half to two-thirds of the fat I consume is naturally saturated. This works out to 60-80g of saturated fat per day, which is way higher than our government’s recommendation. Clearly, I take the government’s idea of what we should be eating with a grain of salt… or a gram of lard. There are many reasons why I believe saturated fat is not only healthy to consume, but necessary. My opinions have been shaped by a good deal of my own research. I won’t preach about it here any more than I already have, but you should feel free to do some Googling if interested.

Anyway, I do believe that simple sugars (especially fructose) are unnatural (and counterproductive at best, damaging at worst) in concentrations any higher than they might occur in fruit. That aside, I’m an ice cream freak, a condition at odds with my beliefs about sugar since ice cream contains, ummmmmmmm, sugar. What to do?

Read the label

Brilliant idea, right? If you take the time to compare the labels of different ice cream brands and flavors within brands, you’ll see that the sugar content varies massively between them. Calories tell almost none of the story. The difference in sugar content between one flavor in a brand and another can be double, but the calories might still read the same if the one with more sugar has less fat than the one with less sugar. This is very common with flavors that contain lots of mix ins, as well as with frozen yogurts, which are typically marketed as a healthier alternative to ice cream. This can be potentially misleading because they tend to (or at least can) contain more sugar.

Pinkberry–A wolf in sheep’s yogurt

Take this example: I recently found myself in a Pinkberry (frozen yogurt seller) when on a short vacation in California. In my opinion, Pinkberry attempts to market its products as healthy, although they don’t say it outright. Maybe that’s just me reading into it, but I think when most people think of Pinkberry, they think of a food product that’s not bad for them, and with all the hype around the probiotics their products contain, maybe even good for them (there are plenty of better ways to get a dose of probiotics). Anyway, of course I had to download the PDF containing complete nutrition for Pinkberry’s entire line of flavors (it’s literally 44 pages). I discovered that the majority of its offerings contain inexplicably large quantities of sugar. I calculated that across 35 flavors the average sugar content per 100g (or 1/2 cup) is around 22g, yet there’s no fat in most flavors. Without a good dose of fat to buffer that sugar, most of Pinkberry’s products are efficient insulin bombs (although there is the notable exception of Pinkberry’s plain Greek yogurt with only 6g sugar). That’s without any toppings, nearly all of which are unabashed sugar missiles. One serving of, say, the chocolate chip cookie dough topping is 12 grams and contains 5g of sugar. “Ok, 5g isn’t terrible”, you say, but do you have any idea how tiny 12 grams of cookie dough is? That’s less than 1/2 of one ounce. You almost can’t see it when it’s in the cup! Drop a couple of ounces of those on and you can VERY easily hit 60g of sugar in your final product, if not more.

There’s another frozen yogurt company out there called Red Mango that offers true “frozen yogurt” that really tastes like yogurt (tart) and has much less sugar than what we normally think of as frozen yogurt. I have to admit that I’m not fond of the flavor of this “real” frozen yogurt (I prefer to eat regular non-frozen yogurt), but I think that their products (or at least many of them based on what I can see on their website) are actually healthy.

Eat Ice Cream (or at least something with more fat and less sugar)

So in light of my opinions about natural fat (like the fat in a quality ice cream) and sugar, you can understand why I prefer not to eat frozen yogurt unless it contains less fat and less sugar than its ice cream counterpart, which is rare indeed. When I buy ice cream, I look for something with 13-15g of sugar per 1/2 cup serving and anywhere from 10-16g fat. I’m wary of ice creams with lower fat. Some companies create lower fat ice creams mechanically by churning air into their products (which then have to be called frozen desserts because they contain too much air to be legally deemed ice cream). Others add fillers, stabilizers and thickeners like carrageenan, mono and diglycerides, various gums, starches and who knows what else. I’m fine with extra air, but not with fillers. The frozen dessert in the image at the top of this post is awesome for several reasons. First, its base is coconut cream, which is exceptionally nutritious. Second, it contains 15g of sugar per 1/2 cup serving, which is acceptable to me. Third, it has 14 grams of fat, which is very satiating and helps moderate the insulin rush. Fourth, there’s scotch in it, and boy, you can taste it.

As the name implies, Lemon Mint Ricecream can be a calorie bomb

I deploy ricecream strategically for one or a combination of the two following reasons: 1) I’m totally burned out i.e. I’ve depleted most muscle and liver glycogen walking 20,000 steps while fasted or after having put in a particularly grueling lifting session, or 2) I’m mentally burned out and need a soul massage.

Ice cream density is the devil

First, let me say that Ben and Jerry’s makes me angry. There’s no reason ice cream should be that rich. If you take a look at the weight of one serving (1/2 cup) of a “simple” Ben and Jerry’s flavor, like chocolate or vanilla, you’ll notice that it’s approximately 100 grams. Compare that to a less rich ice cream like Turkey Hill chocolate or vanilla, and you’ll see that the same 1/2 cup serving weighs around 60 grams. That means it’s less dense. Ok, fine, but that also translates into Turkey Hill containing about 60% the fat and 50% the sugar of the same volume of Ben and Jerry’s. Sure, you could eat only a quarter cup of B and J’s, but why the heck would a human want so little ice cream? I don’t know. This gets me all nice and hot for my next item, a rant against fructose.

Fructose is toxic

In my opinion fructose should be classified as a toxin and only be permitted to be used by a skilled practitioner who is well in tune with his or her body. Agave syrup should be banned outright, for it is 70% fructose, higher in fructose than any other substance other than pure fructose. You can hate me for despising agave syrup; I’m at peace with it. Based on my own research, I believe that fructose is so fantastically bad for the body for so many reasons. Yeah, sure it doesn’t elicit much of an insulin response (which is totally ironic), but for me, its number one offense is that the form of glycogen into which it’s converted by the liver cannot be stored in muscle which should be our primary carbohydrate storage tank (most people — at least Americans — eat way too much food, carry too little muscle, and don’t deplete their glycogen stores regularly enough for this mechanism to be effective, so they store most excess energy as fat). But I digress. I was saying that the form of glycogen into which fructose is converted can only be stored in the liver, which holds less glycogen than all the muscle in the body. As soon as the liver’s full of glycogen, which for the average, non-fasting, less active person it almost always is, that fructose is converted to triglycerides and stored as fat. Ever heard of high circulating triglycerides and how bad that is? Fructose, not saturated fat or cholesterol is one of the major contributors to the condition precisely because of way it is metabolized.

If I eat something with sugar (sucrose, which is half fructose by weight) in it, I make damn certain I’ve done everything I can to deplete my glycogen stores. That statement is a bit of a straw man; since I fast 21 hours every day and walk or lift or a combination of the two during my fast, it’s never an issue. This is yet another reason why fasting regularly for an extended period can be so incredibly powerful.